carl nichols

financial legal

In the beginning...

the analyses were finalized, the financials were appoved and contracts were signed enabling the launch of Carl back in the late Baby Boomer era from a remote corner of Massachusetts. He was a troublesome one, always willing to challenge conventional thinking - "well teacher, maybe two plus two does equal four, maybe not; let's dig deeper" - and never willing to leave well enough alone - "sure we can toggle binary code into our Altair computer, but I want 3D." Exile at Brown University and later Harvard Business School gave Carl a computer science background he applied in business. The first victims of this new knowledge were IBM and AT&T; he then joined the management consulting firm Booz-Allen & Hamilton so he could much more quickly get through the Fortune 100, providing cures to each company for whatever ailed them. Seeking a more "hands-on" role he leaped into general management at Scrivner and later Pacific Telesis.

Then suddenly...

he realized it's far more fun to start up a business in a dynamic, new environment. So Carl teamed up with his college buddy Randy at Interactive Minds to "incubate" new, interactive businesses, such as Electric Minds. Piecing together the marketing ideas, financial scenarios and technical operations created great excitement and an opportunity to build teams tackling the new, unknown industry. "We can build communities, we can build content and we can link it all together into a society on the web," he yelled.

And finally...

with the pursuit of incubating new businesses under way the quest now turns to making each firm a stellar performer. So besides providing the strategic and operations support it's valuable to give new companies a single partner to turn to. This will require Interactive Minds developing new services, including executive recruiting, venture financing and business development, to offer the incubation firms. Meanwhile, as the industry continues to rapidly evolve, new business models need to be continuously invented, developed and launched. Ah, the joy of defining the unknown and making it come alive.